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OCHS grads plan to 'kickstart' long-awaited film project

When Matthew Perkins attended the University of Georgia, he was the man inside the Hairy Dawg costume on the sidelines at Bulldog football games. But now he’s in New York City and is the man behind the camera in an ambitious film project.

But there is a catch.

Perkins, and his co-producer, Nathan Bridges, both 2002 Oconee County High grads, need $200,000 to make the movie a reality. Their goal is to have the movie ready to submit in September to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

“We’ve been pushing this project really since college. It’s been a long process of needing investors,” Perkins said recently by telephone from his home in New York City. “We’ve had a few interested over the years, but they eventually backed out. I have one investor now who is willing to match whatever money we can raise.”

So beginning last week, Perkins and Bridges listed their project with Kickstarter.com, a website used to raise money for proposed projects — think movies, books or new inventions. The singer Allison Weiss, a familiar artist on the Athens music scene, recently used the site to raise money to produce an EP.

The donor has offered $100,000, but the pair needs to raise a matching amount and do it in 30 days, Perkins said.

“If we don’t reach the goal we don’t get anything. It’s an all-or-nothing process,” he said.

The independent film that the pair want to make is called “Life is Short,” the story of a dwarf whose ambitions in the movie industry is to step outside the type-cast roles so often offered to dwarfs or midgets. The story is based loosely on Perkins’ friend, Aaron Beelner, an actor whom Perkins met while they were attending UGA. Beelner, who is now an actor, will be in a new movie by Jeff Foxworthy called “Crackerjack.”

In “Life is Short,” the little person is offered an audition for the role as the mayor of Munchkinland in a Martin Scorsese-directed remake of “The Wizard of Oz.”

“He’s not really interested ... so he goes in and tries out for the role of the Tin Man,” Perkins said.

The film is a comedy, said Perkins, who soon after moving to New York in 2006 worked on the set of the film “American Gangster,” directed by Ridley Scott. Perkins is hoping the Kickstarter effort will produce enough cash to secure the offer he already has in hand.

“I know $100,000 is pretty ambitious, but in movie terms that is nothing,” he noted. The script, written by Perkins and Bridges, is already in the hands of actors.

“Nobody wants to sign onto a project unless it real,” said Perkins, who added he believes in the movie and that’s why “we’re still pressing forward with it.”